Friday, September 8, 2017

Serious Black – Magic

Another year almost in the books means
another album from International supergroup Serious Black. Since forming a few
years ago, they have released a new album every year from 2015 onwards. All
three records features a lot of songs (too many, really), but 2017’s “Magic” is
much fairer to fans who skip the special edition (the previous album has 7
bonus tracks; almost half the album). Given the pedigree of Serious Black’s
musicians, one would expect absolutely brilliant material, but fatigue set in
even from their very first record. Make no mistake, “Magic” has more than a
handful of really solid, hard rocking anthems, but like its predecessors,
struggles to maintain its hour runtime.

Musically, “Magic” shows the band
maintaining their signature hard-rock infused heavy metal sound. Though the
musicians in the band primarily come from power metal backgrounds, it would be
fairer to liken Serious Black to more modern power metal that is excessively
melodic heavy metal. There is no overwhelming double bass, high-speed shredding
solos, or even crazy high-pitched vocals. Instead, the focus is on pleasing
melodies led by singer Urban breed. He doesn’t sound quite as strong as at his
peak (on Bloodbound’s “Tabula Rasa”), but he continues to have a unique voice.
In particular, they really play up the magic theme on this record, with breed
taking on the role as the magician. Admittedly, his voice does sound
appropriate for this imagery, but there are far too many songs focused on magic
on this record (“Binary Magic”, “I Can Do Magic”, “Serious Black Magic”).

The simplistic nature of Serious Black’s
music means that “Magic” is a definite grower. Truthfully, this album was a
painful listen the first time around, but on subsequent spins, the subtleties
of the songs tend to click. The biggest improvement over the last couple of
records is that the band slowed down on the ballads. Even the heavier songs
avoid being as sappy as they were on “Mirrorworld” (though “Now You’ll Never
Know” is definitely the contender on this album). Aside from this, however,
“Magic” stays the course. The variation in song quality swings fairly wide, but
ultimately comes down to how good the chorus is. There aren’t a lot of
extremely memorable melodies, minimal flashy guitar solos, and not too many
riffs. This doesn’t sound like Serious Black has much to offer, but it does
come together surprisingly well.

The real solution to Serious Black’s
problem is to slow down and stop releasing so much material. If you cut this
album down to the first 10 songs (including the intro), it’s a digestible
40-minute effort without any weak tracks. It’s easy to see how with an extra
year or two, the band could have refined some of these songs into more potent
efforts, or even just written better songs to include on the final product. Compared
to the neoclassical tinge of “Castor Skies”, for example, nothing on “Magic”
even comes close to replicating the same brilliance. Nevertheless, this is a
decent record, and is likely to be enjoyed by anyone who has an appreciation
for power metal’s turn towards hard rock over the last decade or so.